Page 34 of Contractually Wed

“Please, Apollo. You can bring me up to speed on that eco-resort in the Philippines.”

“If I get in bed with you, we will not be discussing architecture. I doubt we will be talking at all and you’re too weak for that kind of activity.”

“Of course I’m not weak. Especially if I let you do all the work,” she said, wriggling her feathery brows. “I know you long for a wife who will willingly put up with whatever you do to her.”

“That sounds likeyourfantasy,pethi mou. Not mine.”

“What do you think I’m trying to tell you without actually saying it?”

“Maybe I won’t understand until you beg me.”

“You’re mean.”

“You’re the one who called me names in front of my family. Now even they believe I’m a villain.”

He didn’t add that his mother already thought so. It hurt him, this unspoken rift between him and his mother, but he had no idea how to fix it. Until recently, he hadn’t even wanted to. Though now, he saw that his restlessness of the past few years stemmed also from this disconnection between him and them.

Mama didn’t understand his point of view and he definitely didn’t understand hers. Neither did he forget that, in Mama’s eyes, marrying Jia without knowing his nefarious intentions, which he was now glad Jia hid from her, was the only right thing he had done in his adult life.

“I’m sorry for that,” Jia said, flushing. Rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. “I...overreacted. I’ll explain it to them. I’ll tell them the antibiotics made my brain wonky. I’ll tell them you’re the best husband I could’ve ever asked for, that you keep me well stocked in orgasms. At least, until two weeks ago.”

His destruction, he’d never thought, could come in the form of a woman. Or that he would willingly walk toward it. “Not enough,” he said, bracing himself against her warmth as she pressed a kiss on his chest.

She stomped her foot and blew impatiently at a lock of hair that dared to caress her cheek. “I miss you, Apollo. Won’t you please keep me company?”

He tucked his hands into his pockets, to stop himself from reaching for her. “Not nearly enough.”

She exhaled roughly. “I miss...talking with you about work and our vision for the future and I... I miss your kisses and how you let me use you as a squishy when I’m deep in sleep and I’m horny for you and only you. I kept having these feverish dreams where I’m caught under you and I’m not even trying to get away as you have your way with me and those weird dreams were the only thing that made it worth staying in bed. So, my dear husband, won’t you please pin me under you and have your wicked way with me?”

Apollo had no idea if she’d said anything past that or if he’d replied at all, because all he could hear was the thundering whoosh of his desire in his ears and all he could feel was the weight of her slender body in his arms as he carried her up to their bedroom.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ITWASLONGpast midnight and Jia thought her bones might crumble to dust if she so much as moved her little finger. But even sated to the point of exhaustion, she couldn’t fall asleep.

Apollo had been extra ruthless and demanding and insatiable since she’d slowly been gaining her strength back. There had been a near-frenzy to how he had made love to her, as if he had to make up for the time they had lost when she had been ill. As if he had worried about losing her.

Which was ridiculous because it had been an infection. Even that looked like a blessing given it had shifted something between them. Within her.

Admitting to the promise Mom had asked of her had provided a strange relief and rearrangement of facts in her head. After so many years, she thought of those days when Mom had been sick and everyone had been devastated and Jia had been at the center of the storm. She wondered how confused and scared her mom must have been to extract such a promise from a thirteen-year-old.

Had she ever truly loved Jia? Or had she only seen her as one mistake that she had to make up for, for the rest of her life?

It had taken Apollo’s relentless probing to make her question the patterns that had been set a decade ago.

Now this new experience of intimacy with him. A whole week of glutting on him, and not just sex either. He had taught her how to play chess in bed and she had taught him how to binge-watch reality shows—though the workaholic that he was didn’t have a natural talent for it. They worked briefly on some design modifications because Apollo had shockingly enough taken the week off, talked about the charity projects he had put aside a decade ago because he hadn’t the resources to see them through.

He demanded so much from her that she could imagine living in a different galaxy whereshewas the sun and he some orbiting planet. No one had ever wanted to know how she’d gotten every scar on her body, the meaning of her tattoos, or what her deepest dreams were and why she kept them locked tight.

One evening, he’d flown them to visit a large, and by that she meantvast, plot of land that he had bought two days prior.

He was building a new house there and would like her input for its design, he’d murmured when Jia had prodded him through sleep-heavy lids. Irritatingly enough, she had tired far too soon on their outing and had been almost drifting to sleep. Now she had a feeling he’d whispered the truth because he had thought her out of it.

A house for their family.

It was a commitment she’d never expected from this relationship, never dreamed of from this marriage when she’d broken into his penthouse in New York.

The prospect of that dream, of letting herself see that far into the future, made her heart dance far too fast in her chest, coated her skin with slick sweat.

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